We just had our internet installed last week, and it’s supposed to be at least 10mps. I’ve found it to be much slower than that, so I went to auditmypc (just through googling) and I haven’t gotten a test that puts my download speed above 1.6mps.
Before I call the company, I’d just like to know if this test is reliable or if there’s another test I could try.
The Speed Test at Speakeasy has always been reliable for me.
I just tried yours and compared it to www.speedtest.com (which is harder to use) and they came out about the same so that is a good cross-check. I have Verizon Fios and it came out to about 20mb/s download and 5mb/s upload which allows me to do almost anything internet related extremely fast including Netflix On Demand.
There can be some other factors with slow internet connections other than line speed. Windows registry settings can have a dramatic effect on internet speed in some case and there are a lot of experimenters out there with pages on the web with some simple solutions. I won’t recommend any in particular but I have had good luck with some of them in the past but it takes some reading to figure out what is the best for you.
DSLreports.com has a collection of speedtests, including SpeakEasy, that use servers all over the world for easy comparison.
I second this, and if you want cross check it with Speed Test (Dot) Net
Also check the test with the different servers it should be similar.
You might also want to check your contract. Chances are they don’t guarantee any particular speed, they just promise not to cap it at the lower level.
Isn’t it also possible to use the command prompt to manually ping (or whatever) your ISPs server (or something) to see what speed you’re getting?
This is latency - the time it takes for a packet of data to get to your target and back. In this case, by “speed” he means bandwidth - the amount of data transferred over a given period of time.
Your ISP is only guaranteeing that they won’t cap your bandwidth below X speed. To actually acheive that speed, everything between you and your target has to be able to give you that speed. Your transfers will happen at the speed of the slowest point in the journey. But you should get an idea as to whether or not you’re being capped at the ISP end by having multiple fast downloads from different sources going at once. If your max speed always caps out somewhere, that’s a good indication that it’s your ISP’s cap.
I see. So it’s not possible to even test your bandwidth max through some fancy command prompt?
Could it just take time? I don’t know anything about FIOS but I just upgraded my DSL and the Customer Service Rep said, that it could take up to a week before I reach my full speed capacity.
Also I have the lowest tier of DSL now, and I did notice that when I reset the modem, it takes about a day to get the speed back up to where it should be.
Maybe someone who knows all about FIOS can say if something similar applies
No. You’d need a source that you knew could output the amount of data you want to test - but even then, something between the source and you could slow the transfer down even if both end points were capable of being much faster.
The easiest way to be sure is to be swamped in data fed from multiple sources, such that your ISP’s limitations are the most likely thing to be bottlenecking you.
Edit: Most places from the internet aren’t going to give you data at anywhere near 16 Mbs - if they did that for everyone, they’d have massive bandwidth requirements. Sometimes this will happen, but generally your target’s upload speed will be a bigger limiter than your download speed.
I have a 15 MBs connection here but it’s rare for any single download to be greater than 1MB/sec (megabytes, as in 8 Mbs, megabits) - but getting multiple downloads going concurrently I top out as just under 2 MBs (between 15-16 Mbs).
I second this. This is a very good website and also has tweak tests and recommendations on how to alter your MTU settings and such to maximize your internet speeds.
In no way will any DSL ISP offer consistent guaranteed speed. The catch is the weasel word “up to”, which means that even if only 3% of their customer base can achieve it, they canstill advertise 10 Mbit speed, by prefixing an “up to”, to legally protect themselves.
DSL is inherently tied to POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) - the copper wiring installed by the telephone company. Because of the limitation of copper wiring (in terms of conductivity and such), signal strength drops (I believe, linearly) the farther you are from the central office. The maximum limit is around 5 or 6 kilometers. Anything past that, you’re lucky to be getting DSL at all. Factor in sloppy wiring jobs by home contractors, like unshielded wiring, improper terminations, or connections exposed to the elements, and you begin to understand why there’s no way a company can guarantee a certain speed.
The other weasel word is “high speed”. High speed refers to anything higher than 56k. Tricky, eh?
If you’re consistenly registering 1.6 Mbits on a speed test, and you’re paying for 10 Mbits, call in and ask to be switched to a higher tier or a nearby remote. If at all possible, ask to be transferred to a level 2 technician, who can give you a line readout. Ask for the following terms: Profile, RCO (Relative Capacity Occupation), SNR (Singal-to-Noise Ratio), and Attenuation.